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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281241">Playing for Keeps</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum'>AstridContraMundum</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Endeavour (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Based on a Tumblr Post, Easter Egg Hunt, Metafiction, Multi, crack-fic, many characters and episodes mentioned</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:21:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,143</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25281241</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“My job is very demanding,” Morse said, reading out the next question card, “so I need someone in my life who can be spontaneous and be willing to always fit their schedule to suit my needs.”</p><p>Immediately, a burst of feminine laughter broke out from behind the curtain.</p><p>“If I were to ask you out to coffee, right now, after the show, would you be able to go with me?”</p><p> <br/>Morse takes a gamble and goes on The Dating Game, but when the others fold their hands, only one contestant is left at the card table.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday, Joss Bixby/Endeavour Morse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Playing for Keeps</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Once again.... many apologies for the ensuing crack-fic!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>Morse sat perched on a three-legged stool, wondering when he had ever felt so awkward.</p><p>It had seemed a lark at first, entering his name as a contestant on The Dating Game. A way to meet someone, perhaps.</p><p>But was he really prepared to toss himself out there, as some sort of offering, before complete strangers? To potentially embarrass himself on national television?</p><p>Was he really so desperate? </p><p> </p><p>Yes.</p><p>Perhaps he really was.</p><p> </p><p>Morse tried as best as he could to tune out the voice of Sergeant Jakes—which was already running through his brain with a steady stream of mirthful commentary—and instead sat straighter on his stool, holding onto a series of question cards, turning them over nervously in his hands.</p><p>This was madness. What was he doing?</p><p>He hadn’t done anything so foolish ever since he’d drunk Emma Carr’s lemonade, out at Maplewick Hall.</p><p> </p><p>He could just make a break for it, he supposed.</p><p>But then, it was too late—he was too slow—because just then, the stage lights rose up, and Julian Calendar was striding out onto the stage, extolling to the studio audience in his rich showman’s voice.</p><p> </p><p>“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m Julian Calendar, and I’ll be your host tonight for a new installment of Britain’s most spell-binding game show .... The Dating Game.”</p><p> </p><p>He said this all in one breath, seeming somehow to address both the camera and the studio audience at once. Morse couldn’t help but follow his gaze, and, as he did, he realized the audience was stacked far higher towards the ceiling than he ever would have imagined.</p><p>He scanned the rows of faces, then, and one, in particular, seemed to leap out at him from the crowds—Jakes, smiling sardonically, giving him a mock salute.</p><p> </p><p>Well.</p><p>Hardly surprising, that.</p><p>Jakes <em>would</em> come out all this way just to rub his face in it.</p><p> </p><p>In response, Morse tried to look as imposing as possible, even though he felt a bit as if he’d been thrown into the arena—as if he’d rather face a tiger in the labyrinth of a garden maze than to talk to the three contestants hidden behind the dark blue velvet curtain.</p><p> </p><p>But then….</p><p>Perhaps it would all be worth it.</p><p>After all—it was true, what Dr. DeBryn had once noted.</p><p> </p><p>Hope springs eternal in the human breast.</p><p> </p><p>“And tonight,” Calendar continued, “I’d like to introduce our very special guest, Mr. E. Morse, one of our finest boys in blue, a detective sergeant with the Thames Valley Police.”  </p><p> </p><p>“E, is it? How very elusive,” Calendar observed, pivoting towards him before swerving back out to face the audience.</p><p> </p><p>“So, which of our lucky contestants will win a dinner at the Jolly Rajah and a movie at the Roxy with our ‘Man of Mystery?’”</p><p> </p><p>Morse groaned.</p><p>He could only pray that Jakes had missed that last bit.</p><p>Otherwise, he’d be hearing that down at the nick for weeks.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Will it be contestant number one, a social worker who hails from right here in Oxford?” Calendar asked.</p><p>“Hello, stranger,” contestant number one said. </p><p>“Hello,” Morse replied.</p><p> </p><p>Morse began to take heart. She sounded lovely, actually. Much like one of those exuberant young women with big, lined eyes and a penchant for short skirts, the sort of damsel in distress he could really go for.</p><p>Already, the camera was rolling— not the studio camera trained on him—but the one in his mind; already the young woman who sat hidden behind the curtain was a teller at a bank, caught up in the midst of a robbery, and he the copper come to rescue her.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m glad you’re here,” she’d say with a solemn and brave and shining-eyed smile.</p><p>And Morse would say, “So am ….”</p><p> </p><p>“Or contestant number two,” Calendar said, then, breaking Morse out of his reverie. “A businessman who’s made millions in the uh…. the uh….”</p><p>“The import-export business,” contestant number two supplied.</p><p>“Ah, thank you,” Calendar said. “Yes. Would you like to say hello to our Mr. Morse?”</p><p>“Hello, there, old man.”</p><p>“Hello,” Morse said.</p><p> </p><p>Hmmmm.</p><p>The import-export business?</p><p>That was invariably a euphemism for something else.</p><p>Dodgy to say the least.</p><p>The man was most likely a murderer.</p><p> </p><p>Intriguing.</p><p> </p><p>“Or contestant three,” Calendar said. “A photojournalist from across the channel?”</p><p>“Hello, <em>mon cher.</em>”</p><p> </p><p>There was a trace of suggestiveness in the young woman’s husky smoker’s voice, as if she might not have too many high expectations.</p><p>Well.</p><p>That might work.</p><p> </p><p>What had he been thinking? Why had he been so anxious?</p><p> </p><p>This show was brilliant.  </p><p> </p><p>“Hello,” Morse said.</p><p> </p><p>“So,” Calendar said. “Who will be our lucky winner? Let’s find out. Shall we? Mr. Morse, your first question, please…”</p><p> </p><p>And here it was. Maybe he would be in luck. Maybe one of these people would <em>want</em> to win.</p><p>The Jolly Rajah, he had heard, was a very good restaurant.</p><p>Too bad it didn’t sound as if one of the contestants was Jim Strange. He’d been saying all week how he wanted to go there. And he wasn’t all that awkward to talk to, really.</p><p>Even though he didn’t seem to know his lager from bitter.</p><p> </p><p>But, who knew?</p><p>One of these three might be the one he had been waiting for, all along.</p><p>Morse settled back on his stool and read the first card.</p><p> </p><p>“Music is very important to me, so, contestant number one, what I’d like to know is—what sort of music do you like best?”</p><p>“Oh, all sorts, I suppose,” the young woman replied. “The Wildwood, The Beatles, The Stones …”</p><p>“Mmmmm,” Morse said, humming in disapproval.</p><p>“The Kinks, The Strawberry Alarm Clock …”</p><p> </p><p>Morse scowled.</p><p>
  <em>Strawberry Alarm Clock?</em>
</p><p><em>What</em> was she on about?</p><p>Morse hadn’t heard of anything quite so disturbing since that case over at Creswell’s Confectionary, when he’d overheard murmurings about some of the goings-on in the Jelly Room.</p><p> </p><p>“No. No,” Morse said. “I mean, <em>real</em> music.”</p><p>“Well, that is real music,” the young woman protested. “Or what most people consider real music. Why? What sort of music do you like, then?”</p><p> </p><p>Morse was just beginning to open his mouth to speak, when a vision of an old newspaper article swam before his eyes: One in which he was Top of the Cops, the Singing Policeman, and …</p><p>… and perhaps he needn’t admit he was a detective sergeant with a fondness for opera right on national television.</p><p> </p><p>“I think I’m the one who is supposed to be asking the questions,” he said.  </p><p>“Alright,’” the young woman replied. “No need to get tetchy. It just seemed as if you had strong feelings about it. It sounded as if you wanted to talk about it.”</p><p> </p><p>What was this?</p><p>The young woman sounded innocent enough, but, clearly, she was full of dangerous ideas.</p><p> </p><p><em>“Talk about it?</em>” Morse snorted. “Of course, I certainly don’t want to <em>‘talk about it.’”</em></p><p> </p><p>And then the realization hit him.</p><p> </p><p>“Are you ….?”</p><p>“Am I what?” she asked.</p><p>“Mr. Calendar said you were a social worker… you’re not trying to <em>analyze</em> me, are you?”</p><p>“Of course not,” she said, laughing merrily. “I was simply trying to answer the question, and you seemed to turn it all around. It just sounded as if you wanted to talk about yourself, is all.” </p><p> </p><p>“Well. Personally,” contestant number two said, cutting in, “the music I like best is the music of the spheres.”</p><p> </p><p>Morse’s faint scowl deepened.</p><p>What was rubbish was this now?</p><p> </p><p>“The <em>music of the spheres?”</em> he asked.  </p><p>“Yes. You know, old man. That ineffable music that soars from deep within our souls as we stand on the edge of a dock, under a soft black sky full of distant stars, and look sadly and meaningfully into each other’s eyes, confessing our deepest sorrows to one another.”</p><p>“That’s all very nice, I’m sure,” contestant one said, “But it wasn’t your turn, yet, was it? He hasn’t <em>asked</em> you anything.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” Morse said. “That’s all right.”</p><p>He suddenly felt as if he was not perched here on this unsteady stool, but miles away, sitting in a deep chair, brooding over a glass of Scotch.</p><p> </p><p>“Mr. Morse?” Calendar prompted. “Do you have a question for contestant number three?”  </p><p>“Oh. Sorry,” Morse said. “I just needed to clear my head.”</p><p> </p><p>“Contestant number three?” he asked. “What’s your favorite type of music?”</p><p>“As much as I love music, I’m more of a visual person. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say,” she said.</p><p>“Ah,” Morse said.</p><p>“You don’t agree?”</p><p>“Well,” Morse said, uncertainly, “Depends on the words.”</p><p> </p><p>Clearly, they didn’t see eye to eye.</p><p>Clearly, anything between them would be destined to end in heartbreak.</p><p>Morse knew in his heart that he shouldn’t choose her, that he should cross her right off the list.</p><p> </p><p>But yet …</p><p> </p><p>“Mr. Morse?” Calendar said, “How about that second question?”</p><p>“Alright,” Morse said, taking up the second card in his pile.</p><p> </p><p>“My job is very demanding,” he read, “so I need someone in my life who can be spontaneous and always be ready to fit their schedule to suit my needs.”</p><p> </p><p>Immediately, a burst of feminine laughter broke out from behind the curtain.</p><p>Morse paused for a moment, perplexed, and then read on.</p><p> </p><p>“If I were to ask you out to coffee, right now, after the show, would you be able to go with me? Contestant one? You first?”</p><p>“Well,” she said. “Much as I’d love, to, I can’t. I have night class.”</p><p><em>“Night class?”</em> Morse asked, incredulously. “Can’t you miss one night?”</p><p>“No,” she said. “It’s important. I can’t spend my life waiting for someone to tell me it can start. Why couldn’t we just have coffee tomorrow?”</p><p>“Well… I don’t know,” Morse said. “I don’t know when I might have to suddenly rush off to a perfume factory, to perform a clandestine mission for Special Branch.”</p><p>“Can’t you perform your mission for Special Branch tomorrow?”</p><p> </p><p>“I have time for coffee,” contestant two said. “I’ve already been through school. I’m a Harvard man, myself, old man.”</p><p>“Would you stop interrupting?” contestant one replied. “He hasn’t even asked you yet. Is there some special reason you need to be always the center of attention?”</p><p> </p><p>And there she was.</p><p>Analyzing people again.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t help it if I have stage presence,” the man protested.</p><p>Contestant three huffed a laugh.</p><p>“It all seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors to me.”</p><p> </p><p>Morse turned the cards over in his hands, waiting for them to sort themselves out and considering his options.</p><p>It was all very confusing.</p><p>They each of them seemed like they might be a lot of work.</p><p> </p><p>They must find life an awful struggle, being so difficult.</p><p> </p><p>“Contestant three?” Morse asked, at last. “Do you have time for coffee?”</p><p>“But of course I have time for coffee,” she said. “And afterwards we could spend a passionate evening at my flat. And then we could smoke cigarettes as we watch the moon rise out the window.”  </p><p>“Or we could watch the thunderclouds roll in,” Morse suggested.</p><p>“Love and rain,” she gushed. “How English.”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t think we could claim it all for ourselves. There have been people doing that since before there were people. Back when we were… whatever we were.”</p><p>
  <em>“Quelle philosophe!”</em>
</p><p>“They probably lay on branches… wrapped in each other’s arms…. staring out at thunderheads breaking over the savanna. Safe, in that one brief moment, from the vast awfulness of it all.”</p><p> </p><p>There was a long silence, then, from behind the curtain, leaving Morse to wonder if he might have said too much.</p><p> </p><p>“If he was as gloomy as you,” the woman said, laughing, “I hope she kicked him out of the tree.”</p><p> </p><p>“Christ. Is he serious?” contestant number one said, a trace of real concern in her voice.</p><p><br/>
 </p><p>Morse cringed. Somehow, he had forgotten himself.</p><p> </p><p>There was certainly no need to let<em> too</em> much of his true self show before they had even gotten to the first date.</p><p> </p><p>He hurried on to the third question.</p><p> </p><p>“When it comes to love, what are some of your favorite words to live by?” he asked.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” contestant one said. “When it comes to love, you’ll know if it’s the right one.”</p><p>“Hmmmmm,” Morse hummed, noncommittally.</p><p>“Why, whatever’s wrong with that?” the young woman asked.</p><p>“I dunno,” Morse said. “Couldn’t you just…”</p><p>“Just what?”</p><p>“I dunno. Settle?”</p><p>
  <em>“What?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t have any set words,” contestant two said. “I prefer to leave all my doors open. After all, old man. On a night like this, a man might believe anything is possible.”</p><p>Morse mulled that over. He wasn’t much of a believer, really, but the last few years of his life had certainly proved that true. Tigers and opera killers and gangsters in Oxford. And now it seemed as if he was speaking with the Great Gatsby.</p><p>The only thing that might render it all more incredible would be if the man had a deranged identical twin.</p><p>“Contestant three?” he asked.</p><p>“No regrets.”</p><p><em>“No regrets?”</em> Morse asked.</p><p> </p><p>He was right, then; she was already planning to break his heart.</p><p> </p><p>“That sounds as if … .”</p><p>“As if what, <em>mon cher?</em>” she asked.</p><p>“As if you are already planning to leave me before we’ve even had our first date.”</p><p>“Oh, but I am. I’m leaving for Vietnam in a few weeks.”</p><p> </p><p>Morse set the cards down in disbelief. </p><p> </p><p>“You mean to say you find a war zone preferable to my company?”</p><p> </p><p>“I’d say a war zone is <em>comparable</em> to your company,” contestant one said. “You know, you do seem to …”</p><p> </p><p>“What?” Morse blurted.</p><p>“Well. Please don’t take this the wrong way. But you do seem to have a few issues that perhaps you need to work out before you’re ready to date anyone.”</p><p>Morse snorted. “Oh, nicely said, Sigmund Freud.”</p><p>“There you go,” she said. “There you go again. You know, you don’t have to prove how smart you are all of the time.”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t know why you ladies bothered, if you weren’t willing to bring all your cards to the table,” contestant two said, then, cutting in once more. “You obviously aren’t taking the game seriously. You probably weren’t even planning to offer the man a car on the first date.”</p><p> </p><p>Morse sat up straighter on his stool.</p><p>“A car?” he asked.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, my dear, don’t tell me after all of your talk of music and love, you are so easily swayed by material possessions?” contestant three said.</p><p> </p><p>“What kind of a car?” Morse asked.</p><p>“Well. I’ve just had the new Klipspringer Continental delivered this morning.”</p><p>“Hmmmm. That’s a bit fast for me”</p><p>“How about a little red Porsche?”</p><p>“I dunno. I mean, you hardly know me.”</p><p>“A classic red Jaguar?”</p><p>“Actually,” Morse said. “Maybe you do know me.”</p><p>“Of course, I do. You’re a straight bat, old man. Knew it as soon as I heard your voice.”</p><p> </p><p>There was a jumble of confused voices then, rising and falling from behind the curtain.</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t believe this,” contestant three said. “Is he falling for this? What a complete waste of an evening.”</p><p>“You know,” contestant one replied. “If you’re going to Vietnam, you should consider reading Dorothea Frazil’s book. About Korea? Have you heard of it?”</p><p>“I’ve been meaning to look at that,” said contestant three. “Do you want to go get a coffee and talk about it?”</p><p>“I can’t. I have night class.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s right. Tomorrow then?”</p><p>“All right.”<br/>
 </p><p>“Wait,” contestant two said. “Are you ladies leaving?”</p><p>“Yes,” they said, at once. </p><p>“Does that mean that I win, then?”</p><p> </p><p>“I uh… I suppose so,” contestant one said. “If you want to see it like that.”</p><p> </p><p>Julian Calendar raised his microphone, a manic smile on his face working to counteract the nervous laughter in his voice.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, ladies and gentlemen. That’s the joys of live television.  You never know <em>what’</em>s going to happen.”</p><p>“Mr. Morse, I’m afraid you’re left with only one option,” he said. “Contestant number two, if you please?”</p><p> </p><p>A man with dark hair, dressed in an evening suit, strolled out from behind the velvet curtain.</p><p>“I’m Bixby,” he said, extending his hand. “My friends call me Bix. What do you say we skip the movie and head straight to dinner?”</p><p>“Fine by me,” Morse said. “I don’t really care for the pictures. All that screaming in the dark. It’s like a ring from Dante’s Inferno.”</p><p>“It’s a deal, then,” Bixby said. “And then perhaps later we might go back to my place, and you can admire my painting.”</p><p> </p><p>Morse blinked.</p><p> </p><p>Wait.</p><p>
  <em>What?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“It’s a Cleasz,” Bixby said. “Vanitas with the Spinario.”</p><p>“Oh,” Morse said.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"Ceci n'est pas une pipe."</em>
</p><p>But sometimes a pipe is a pipe. </p><p>And sometimes a painting was actually a painting.</p><p> </p><p>Well.</p><p>One thing was certain.</p><p>It was clear that the man didn’t know a damn thing about art.</p><p> </p><p>“You must have been sold a fake,” Morse said. “A copy. The real one hangs in the Rijksmuseum. I’ve seen it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oy! Morse!” Jakes shouted from his seat in the audience.  “Why don’t you at least get off the stage, before you drive that one away, too?”</p><p> </p><p>Morse grimaced.</p><p>Perhaps Jakes was right.</p><p>Perhaps he <em>was </em>destined to make a hash of things, destined by something in his very being to follow in the footsteps of Ronald Beavis, putting the best of his life into his career and taking solace where he could in opera and alcohol.</p><p>Perhaps his fate had been written out already, down to the last sentence.  </p><p> </p><p>Or perhaps that was only one option.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe there could be other universes out there, hundreds of them, a multitude of possible paths leading on off into the future.</p><p>There could be one in which he and the man before him ran off to France to live out their lives in an old country house. Or one in which they worked together to crack a case of international espionage, and then went off to open a tea house together.</p><p>After all, as the man said, on a night like this, anything was possible.</p><p> </p><p>Morse was just turning to head off stage, when Calendar spoke once more into his microphone, all bright smiles for the camera, just like a toothpaste ad featuring Diana Day. </p><p> </p><p>“Be sure to join us again next week,” he said, “as our guest, Ms. Violetta Talenti looks for that special someone with which to spend the perfect evening. She’s an Italian femme fatale with smoldering dark eyes as deep and as beautiful as her tragic past. Or, perhaps, she’s a mere dissembler, looking out for the best chance.”</p><p> </p><p>“Either way,” Calendar said, “she’s the sort of woman sure to get a man shot in a Venetian graveyard in the dead of night.”</p><p> </p><p>Morse stopped and paused on the top step of the stage, his heart racing under his ribs. </p><p>Wait.</p><p><em>What</em> did the man just say?</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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